Quick answer
Reddit does not publish whether it removes EXIF or GPS data from images you upload. We found no Reddit Help article that says what happens to the metadata inside an uploaded image. The only statement we found is a June 2016 comment from a Reddit administrator, relayed by a news site, saying EXIF data is stripped. It is ten years old and we found it on no current Help page, so do not rely on it: remove the metadata yourself before you upload.
What Reddit says
- The Help article How Reddit Uses Location Data says Reddit captures your IP address and infers a general location from it, at city, region or country level. It also says Reddit does not capture or store a precise location for you from your mobile device or browser. That is about your account's location. It does not mention photos or the GPS tags inside them.
- The Help article What information does Reddit collect about me and my account? lists your posts, comments, messages, usage and location information. It says that if you decide to share your location, Reddit collects it from your mobile device, and that it may also get approximate location from your IP address. It does not mention image metadata.
- A TechCrunch article of 21 June 2016 on Reddit's native image hosting quotes a comment from a Reddit admin in the announcement thread: "Yes, EXIF data is stripped. No, it isn't stored." That is a dated comment about the hosting as it launched, passed on by a news site. It is not a Reddit policy page, and it tells you nothing about how images are handled today.
So the published picture is this: Reddit describes the location it gets from your device or IP address, and is silent on the location tags inside a photo file you upload.
Clean the photo before you send it
- Open the tool above and add your JPG, PNG or WebP photos, up to 5 at a time. It runs entirely in your browser and your files are never uploaded.
- Read the before list. It shows what each file held, such as GPS position, camera make and model, serial number, and date and time.
- Download the cleaned copy. The metadata is cut out of the file without re-encoding, so there is no quality loss. The ICC colour profile is kept, and on JPEGs a bare rotation flag is kept so the photo still sits the right way up.
- Check the after list. The tool re-reads the cleaned file to show you what is left.
- Upload the cleaned file to Reddit, whether you attach it to a post or a comment. For HEIC, Safari can open the file and the tool re-saves it as a JPEG, which is a re-encode; in a browser that cannot open HEIC, convert it first. GIF is not supported.
What this does not remove
- What is visible in the picture. Faces, street signs, house numbers and a recognisable view all stay. Crop or retake the photo if they give away where you are.
- The file name. The tool does not rename files, so a name that mentions a street or a town travels with the photo. Rename it yourself.
- Copies stored elsewhere. The tool cannot clean anything Reddit stores, a cloud backup, or a copy someone has already saved or quoted.
- Anything you write. A post title, caption or comment that names a place is text, not metadata, and stays as you typed it.
Want to see what a photo holds first? Try checking what metadata a photo has. For other platforms, see Instagram and Craigslist.